In The Mirror
by FS
Summary: Although she has found all the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, she is unable to put them together, perhaps because she has grown accustomed to blotting out unpleasant memories...


**Disclaimer:**_ Detective Conan_ belongs to Gosho Aoyama and the English version of the song "Fascination", which I used in the first paragraph of the story, belongs to Dick Manning. I am only writing fanfiction for fun and do not make any profits with my fanfics.

**Thanks a lot to my wonderfully fast and efficient DoRaeMon/beta-reader Astarael00. :)**

_FS_

x.

**In the Mirror**

_dedicated to Dagron(rat)_

x.

"It was fascination, I know," she sang quietly, brushing her hair in front of the mirror. "And it might have ended, right then, at the start. Just a passing glance, just a brief romance..." she trailed off.

She was glad she was alone at home, for she knew she was betraying her anxiety in every one of her movements. The clock on her dressing table said it was a quarter past seven. He usually had his frugal breakfast in the Poirot at half past seven and left it about twenty minutes later. If she was lucky, he would open the door just when she walked past the café... and he would greet her with an almost imperceptible smile and one of his strange little remarks before they had to part again.

After changing into the new costume her mother had given her when she passed the final exams at school, she threw a last glance into the mirror to make sure that she didn't need to be self-conscious as far as her appearance was concerned. Red suited her extraordinarily well due to its striking contrast with the colour of her hair, and the classic cut of the costume made her look sophisticated without tarnishing the aura of freshness which she was famous for.

As usual, she spent the remaining fifteen minutes in front of the window of the agency, waiting for him. She didn't mind waiting because she knew he would come. In a way, this game had become a habit for both of them — and she knew from experience he wouldn't let her wait for too long.

Just as expected, he appeared at the corner of the street at half past seven, unmistakable in his usual blue jeans, dark blue jacket and — despite the warm weather — dark-blue woolly hat. She was watching breathlessly how he strolled down the street towards her, pretending that he didn't see her staring at him from above.

After he entered the Poirot, she would spend twenty minutes walking up and down at the window of the agency before she would hurry down the stairs to run into him just as he left the café. Usually, they would meet at the door or on the street — although there had been three times when she had been too impatient and walked past the café when he was still paying his bill. At times she would play with the idea of surprising him by entering the Poirot before he had his breakfast just to see whether he would invite her to have breakfast with him. However, she never attempted to put this idea into action, preferring to wait.

The reason was not her fear of being rejected, for she could feel that he was romantically interested in her. All in all, he didn't strike her as a very shy person, whereupon she surmised that his remarkable restraint towards her must be the result of another, deeper reason she still couldn't make out. Moreover, having started their little game, she wanted him to decide how far it would lead them. Her pride didn't allow her to give him the impression that she was actively pursuing him; and she was patient enough to wait for him to make the second move.

He was standing in front of the Poirot now but didn't enter it as she had expected. Instead, he stopped directly in front of the entrance, stood there for a while with an indecisive air which was rather uncharacteristic of him, then turned abruptly on his heels and — much to her surprise — rang at her door.

i.

Two minutes later, she found herself sitting opposite him at the small table of the agency, sipping her tea while trying to keep her cool at the devastating news he had just broken to her.

He had only come to say goodbye to her, her father and the little genius who was living with them, he had said in an irritatingly matter-of-fact voice. The first thing tomorrow he was flying to New York and would probably not come back to Japan for the next few years unless new obligations forced him to. He wanted to thank Conan once again for his valuable help and her for saving his life when Vermouth attempted to shoot him during his last "tête-à-tête" with Gin.

It didn't matter, she heard her voice saying. Conan was staying at Professor Agasa's because he had grown completely obsessed with the new computer game the Professor created. He was going to stay there until he had solved all the cases of that game, which would probably take him a few days. And while her voice was talking casually to him, her mind returned to the farewell party Sonoko and she had thrown for Jodie-sensei a few days ago. She had known that all the FBI agents in Tokyo were leaving for New York and Chicago tomorrow but had expected that he would stay. From the bits and pieces she had gathered about him during the past months — since she learned about the FBI's "pet project" in Japan — she had wrongly assumed that he was an FBI undercover agent who was actually living in Japan and that he would stay even after the Boss had been captured. His uninterrupted daily walk to the Poirot had nurtured her foolish hopes. Optimistic and naive as she was, she had naturally believed that they would have unlimited time to continue their peculiar game...

"Why didn't you come to the goodbye party?" she asked in a sudden outburst, conscious of her sounding irrationally reproachful. Despite herself, she couldn't help but think that she had been horribly ill-treated by him.

He wasn't a very social person, he told her. Actually, he had never been. Hence he tried to avoid parties and other social gatherings whenever he could and preferred to say goodbye in private as he had just done.

"But your family," she protested, clinging to the last fragile hope that he still might change his mind. "Your family and friends are here in Tokyo, aren't they? Will you come back to visit them from time to time?"

No, he answered curtly, decisively, without explaining whether he meant he didn't have family and friends in Tokyo or whether he didn't plan to visit them. There was nothing which could keep him in Japan, he added after noticing the look on her face. Important work was awaiting him in New York while everything he wanted to do in Tokyo had been done.

Afterwards a dead silence fell upon them, in which she furiously tried to grasp the hidden meaning of his words. When she finally looked up from the table, she was aware of him gazing at her image in the new mirror, which she had bought to reflect the sunlight coming from the window. In the light of the morning, his eyes were amazingly bright and filled with an expression she believed to be a mixture of tenderness and remorse. But for all that — when she plucked up the courage to meet his gaze — she realized he wasn't really looking at her. He turned immediately from the mirror and gave her a tiny smile when he noticed that she was watching him, but was not fast enough to hide the look of sadness — disappointment? — flickering across his face.

Now that she began to see their relationship in a new light, she wondered how it could have taken her so long to understand that their little game had — as far as he was concerned — never been about him and her. It was not her reflection he wanted to see in the mirror. For him, she was only the vivid and perhaps painful reminder of somebody else. There had always been the shadow of another woman — the one he was really interested in — between them, while she had naively assumed he was in love with her.

Later, when he had left and she was alone again, she walked over to the place he had sat, sank down onto the couch and gazed hard into the mirror. She had successfully resisted the temptation to spend more time with him before his departure by accompanying him to Professor Agasa's, and was now fighting the urge to rush to the window to catch a last glimpse of him before he was gone. Instead she thought back to their first encounters and recalled the few strange words he had thrown at her when he saw her crying. He had mentioned a woman — a foolish one — who had looked very much like her.

After the downfall of the Organization, Ai-chan had told her that she resembled her late sister, who had been shot two years ago. Even Eisuke-kun once admitted that she sometimes reminded him of his missing sister, who he had been searching for. Perhaps she possessed the kind of anonymous face or aura that would always remind other people of the beloved ones they had lost, she thought in a new pang of sorrow, searching in the mirror for the face of the woman he had wanted her to be.

In the mirror, she saw a pale young woman with sad, unwavering eyes and a cloud of long black hair. Another face very much like her own flashed though her mind and disappeared again in the blink of an eye. She had the sneaking suspicion she had met this woman before, although she had — for a reason she didn't know — completely erased those memories from her mind. She felt that she had finally found all the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and should be able to fit them together. But, no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember.

**The End**

x.

**Author's Notes:**

The story takes place in the same universe as "His Deepest Secret" but is in no way connected to it. That's why I decided to post it separately.


End file.
